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Malik Nous
Malik Nous is the creator of the entire universe including Aeol and all other worlds, dimensions and realms. He is the only true god and the source of all energy, life and existence. While the people of The Accord Lands worship other entities, they accept Malik Nous is the only being who can truly be referred to as a god - all energy and existence originally comes from him. So ingrained is the concept of Malik Nous as the sole god that the very concept of other gods would be very confusing to all but the most learned theological theorists. According to the teachings of the Churches of the Archons, Malik Nous existed before anything else, as a self-contained malevolent intelligence. Malik Nous was all powerful but he was also selfish, cruel and greedy. He created a realm outside of himself in order to have something separate from him in order to dominate it. This was the act of creation that brought the universe into existence. It is taught that Malik Nous in his infinite power and infinite spite spent untold aeons playing with the universe, detonating stars and ripping apart planets for his own entertainment. Eventually Malik Nous grew tired of tormenting inanimate matter. He decided that it would be more satisfying to dominate living beings that could feel fear, pain and suffering. He created life. After giving living things some time to understand their existence, Malik Nous communicated with them and informed them that he was their creator and master, and that they would live, suffer and die according to his whims. This era was known as the First Years and is recorded only in myth. What is known is that at this time, Malik Nous' power was infinite - the only limits on it were his attention. Even as powerful as he was he could not personally torment or torture every individual. He experimented with setting living things against one another, but even his most powerful servants could not torture as effectively as he could, despite their desire to serve their all-powerful master. Eventually a group of twelve individuals approached Malik Nous, presenting themselves as loyal servants anxious to please. They offered to act as direct vessels for his power, and in exchange he would be able to torture and dominate other living beings through them. Malik Nous accepted, and imbued these twelve individuals with a piece of his power each. The twelve individuals immediately rebelled. Malik Nous tried to withdraw their powers, but found he was unable to do so - he had unknowingly permanently given each of these individuals a piece of his divine nature. These twelve became the Archons. After a long war, the Archons were able to carve out a space within the universe where Malik Nous' powers were in eclipse. This space was known as Aeol. Ever since then, Malik Nous has done everything he can to destroy Aeol and the Archons and reassert his terrible dominion over the beings living there, and return to the First Years. Although he cannot directly crush Aeol, he is capable of sending his servants into it - these include the unmen, various beasts and monsters, and in extreme cases, demons, devils and other extraplanar servants. Malik Nous is depicted as holding dominion over countless worlds and realms outside Aeol, which represents the sole part of the universe free of his direct control. However, his hatred of freedom means that he devotes almost all of his resources to crushing Aeol rather than ruling the worlds that have already submitted to him. All the Archons, even those aligned to Chaos and/or Evil, oppose Malik Nous and his followers. Even Archons whose domains represent concepts aligned to evil, such as Radu and Wessling, represent evils that come from free thought, not the all-crushing oppressive evil of a divine overlord of limitless power and malice. Malik Nous' followers are mostly unmen, but there are members of the free races who follow him, almost always in secret. In every realm of the Accord Lands, worship of Malik Nous is punishable by death, and even learning about him is very tightly restricted (and in some cases, such as Knagel or Suliaro, outright forbidden). Malik Nous is usually presented as male and referred to as "he" and "him", but since he was never truly a physical being, he has no true gender, and it is rumoured that he sometimes appears to his followers as an androgyne or even a woman. Malik Nous is rarely physically depicted, since he existed before the physical world was created. For reasons lost to history, some religious artists took to conveying his presence with the image of a (male) peacock, and this association has become ingrained, to the point that most followers of the Archons view peacocks with faint suspicion, even though they know there is no actual connection between Malik Nous and the bird. Another common symbol, that seems to have originated from cultists who worship the Dark Creator, is the nine-pointed star - each point is said to represent power stolen by an Archon, and the star symbolises the determination of Malik Nous and his worshippers to reclaim his divinity. Malik Nous is not the patron of any nation, but the unmen follow him. Category:Chaotic Evil